Former Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Leanna Wen called for the Biden administration to prompt the FDA to authorize the H5N1 vaccine and expand rapid-testing for the bird flu before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
In an appearance on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” Sunday, Wen claimed that the Biden administration should takes steps to prepare for a possible animal-to-human outbreak of H5N1 following reports a patient in Louisiana contracted the virus earlier this month.
“It’s one more sign that the drum beat of bird flu coming closer to humans is becoming a major threat,” Wen said. “So, we’ve already seen this year that there have been a number of mammalian species close to humans that now have bird flu outbreaks. We have outbreaks in poultry in all 50 states. 16 states have outbreaks in cattle.”
Report of mutations in a bird flu patient in Louisiana is "one more sign that the drumbeat of bird flu coming closer to humans is becoming a major threat," says former Baltimore health commissioner @DrLeanaWen.
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 29, 2024
"Now, we have 66 cases of bird flu in humans, and this is almost… pic.twitter.com/k8OcPjGz6p
“In California, in the last 30 days, there have been more than 300 herds that tested positive, and now we have 66 cases of bird flu in humans, and this is almost certainly a significant undercount, because we have not been doing nearly enough testing.”
“So, we really don’t know the extent of bird flu that’s out there in humans,” she continued. “But this particular case, it’s someone who is severely ill. But not only that, researchers have isolated the virus in this individual who is sick in Louisiana, and they found that this particular strain of the virus appears to have acquired mutations that make it more likely to bind to airway receptors.”
Wen then said the Biden administration needs to expand rapid testing for the virus have the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quickly approve the H5N1 for commercial use to prevent another COVID-style pandemic.
“I feel like we should have learned our lesson from COVID that just because we aren’t testing, it doesn’t mean that the virus isn’t there. It just means that we aren’t looking for it,” she said.
Amid concerns about the bird flu, the Biden administration should be making rapid tests available and ask the FDA to authorize the already-existing H5N1 vaccine, says former Baltimore health commissioner @DrLeanaWen.
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 29, 2024
"I feel like we should've learned our lesson from COVID, that… pic.twitter.com/Hb38r1RWJ7
“We should be having rapid tests, home tests, available to all farm workers, to their families, for the clinicians taking care of them, so that we aren’t waiting for public labs and CDC labs to tell us what’s bird flu or not.”
Wen stressed that the FDA must approve the H5N1 vaccine so that 5 million doses of it can be quickly administered to the “vulnerable” population before Trump takes office.
“And the second very important thing is this is not like the beginning of COVID, where we were dealing with a new virus, we didn’t have a vaccine. There actually is a vaccine developed already against H5N1,” Wen explained. “The Biden administration has contracted with manufacturers to make almost 5 million doses of the vaccine. However, they have not asked the FDA to authorize the vaccine. There’s research done on it. They could get this authorized now, and also get the vaccine out so- and to farm workers and to vulnerable people.”
Wen went on to say that Biden needs to move quickly on these efforts because the Trump administration may not want to authorize new vaccines given the massive outcry over the experimental COVID mRNA injections.
“I think that’s the right approach, because we don’t know what the Trump administration is going to be doing around bird flu,” she said. “If they have people coming in with anti-vaccine stances, could they hold up vaccine authorization? If they don’t want to know how much bird flu is out there, could they withhold testing? I mean, that’s a possibility, and I think the Biden administration in the remaining days should get testing and vaccines widely available so that at least it empowers state and local health officials and clinicians to do the right thing for their patients.”
Wen was an outspoken proponent of the harsh COVID measures, including prolonged shutdowns of schools and businesses, vaccine mandates, and punishments for the unvaccinated.
Her concerns that the Trump administration may not go along with the rushed distribution of new bird flu vaccines are not unwarranted.
Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in June floated the possibility that H5N1, like COVID-19, was engineered in a biological lab.
“With so much money on the table, is it conceivable that someone might deliberately release a bioengineered bird flu? When this kind of gain-of-function research is going on, accidental or deliberate leaks are inevitable,” Kennedy wrote in an X article.
It looks like the establishment is trying to rush into a new (and lucrative) pandemic hysteria before Trump takes office in just a few weeks.
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